Dockerization

Instead of running both database server and node application on our machine, using containerization we can run each of them as separate containers. Containers are isolated from one another and bundle their own software, libraries and configuration files.

To do that you need to install docker, docker-compose and create Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml files.

docker-compose.yml

version: "3"
services:
  db:
    container_name: nodejs-onboarding-dev-database
    image: postgres:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - ./postgresdb:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    ports:
      - 5432:5432
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_DB='<database_name>'
      - POSTGRES_USER='<user_name>'
      - POSTGRES_PASS='<user_password>'
  app:
    container_name: nodejs-onboarding-dev-app
    image: nodejs-onboarding-dev-image
    restart: unless-stopped
    build:
      context: .
    volumes:
      - ./:/app
    ports:
      - 8000:8000
    depends_on:
      - db
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_DB='<database_name>'
      - POSTGRES_USER='<user_name>'
      - POSTGRES_PASS='<user_password>'
      - POSTGRES_HOST='db'

Dockerfile

FROM node:lts-alpine
WORKDIR /app
COPY package\*.json .
RUN npm install
COPY . .
EXPOSE 8000
CMD ["npm", "run", "dev:watch"]

Run docker-compose up which will build, create and start containers. To bring down and remove containers use docker-compose down.